


The Importance of Being Serious, Sincere and Ernest

by kinetikatrue



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-24
Updated: 2005-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 15:38:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/651879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinetikatrue/pseuds/kinetikatrue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seeing <em>The Importance of Being Ernest</em> with Draco has Harry thinking about things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Importance of Being Serious, Sincere and Ernest

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/)**copperbadge** ’s Student Blooper Drabble Challenge based on _18\. The title means it's important to be serious and sincere, yet it's also just as important, if not more so, to be named Ernest._ , though it’s really quite long enough to push it thoroughly into the ficlet category, at least.

“What a ridiculous play!” Draco declaims, pitching his voice to carry, as always. Harry thinks, not for the first time, that it’s rather a shame that they didn’t have school theatricals at Hogwarts, as Draco might’ve been a rather more bearable boy if he’d had more of an outlet for his need to be constantly surrounded by drama. _And_ , as an added benefit, if they’d done Shakespeare, in the traditional, Elizabethan, style, well – he might’ve found out just how well Draco kissed a bit sooner.

“I mean, really – how can anyone take a person, who would willingly change their name to Ernest, seriously? It’s just so, so – _Hufflepuffish_!” Draco has paused, again, to let the world appreciate the incontrovertible truth of his proclamation and, in that pause, Harry wonders, idly, whether Draco ever knew that Ernie Macmillan, who, in the end, was neither earnest nor loyal, was a Hufflepuff. He thinks it’s a good thing to know, and to remember: that Ernie, whom the sorting hat placed in loyal Hufflepuff without a qualm, had it in him to turn traitor, and that Draco, who was once considered, by one and all, the archetypical Slytherin, is still at his side twenty-odd years on.

“Not that the names they started out with were all that much better – Algernon, for Merlin’s sake! And John – how unbearably common. Still, if they were going to pick new ones . . .,” and Draco’s off on a tear, displaying every well-honed, pureblood naming prejudice he possesses (and he has _quite_ a collection – which, when taken together become capriciously contradictory and terribly convoluted). Harry lets it all wash over him – he’s heard every single intricate permutation before on occasions far too numerous to count (when Draco learned that Ron and Hermione had named their daughter Victoria Ann, at every Sorting Feast since they’ve taken their current positions at Hogwarts, whenever a particularly egregious birth announcement catches his lover’s eye in the Daily Prophet) and long since decided that it’s all as silly as Cecily and Gwendolyn and their twin fixations on men named Ernest. In fact, in the thirty-odd years he’s spent in the wizarding world, he’s found rather a lot to categorise as completely ridiculous – not just naming prejudices, but house prejudices and blood prejudices and species prejudices and magic prejudices and on and on and on.

He has, as a matter of fact, quite enjoyed the play. It is a farce – the characters and situations are meant to be seen as trivial and excessively silly – and it is this truly human ability to look at their foiblies and see the humour in them that Harry finds of such value; in fact, he rather thinks the Wizarding World could benefit from seeing their oddities and prejudices in just such a light. As it is, listening to Draco go on and on about proper naming practices with all the earnestness and seriousness he has so recently decried is almost more than Harry can handle with a straight face, so he extricates himself from this predicament by drawing Draco off into a convenient alcove and stopping his mouth with purposeful kisses. When they eventually surface, it is only to apparate back to their hotel room so that they can get sincerely naked.

_Exeunt_


End file.
